


Stolen Lullaby

by midnightplanets



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Freeform, Gen, Reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-23 01:32:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6100442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightplanets/pseuds/midnightplanets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phasma overhears someone listening to a song from her homeplanet, bringing back a flood of memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stolen Lullaby

**Author's Note:**

> A quick Phasma one-shot, inspired by the nostalgic qualities of music and language. Thanks for reading, and hope you enjoy it!

Phasma was inducted into the Stormtrooper program in its early stages, before they had worked out the kinks to make it the well-oiled machine it is today.

 

She was four when she was taken away, or rather, sent from her family. A troubled family, she remembered. Worry, frustration, arguing behind closed doors, her parents wondering how they were going to feed their child for another day while they often went without food themselves so that she could eat and grow. Grow strong, she remembers them saying, so she could protect herself in this treacherous neighborhood they lived in. They wanted a good life for their daughter, they wanted her to be able to take care of herself.

 

She barely remembers her planet. Brief glimpses as if snapshots in her memory, being pushed in a stroller down a hot sidewalk, light glinting like a knife off of shiny structures under the blinding sunlight.

 

Phasma marched down the hall of the Finalizer on her usual patrol route, her last one for the night, making sure everyone was doing what they were supposed to, nothing was out of line. The maintenance worker in front of her was listening to the Holowave so loudly she could hear the faint tune seeping out of the backside of his headphones. It was in a primitive local language, not Basic which she had gotten so accustomed to hearing these past twenty or so years of her life.

 

He was an older man, and he must be from the same planet as her, she knew as soon as she heard the tune. It was a song she had remembered her mother singing in lazy carefree moments while she sprawled out in the dingy sunlit couch, a tiny Phasma curled up on her lap, looking up at her adoringly. Her mother's crooning voice was not the kind of voice that was popular on the Holowaves now, but an anachronism that stood out even back then on their home planet, only seeming not so strange in the backwater neighborhood they lived in. But there was something strong and firm and grounded about her mother’s voice. It always tore her away from childhood fantastical daydreams and brought her back down to her senses, the present, their small home, her family who loved her.

 

Phasma ignored the maintenance worker. There was no reason for idle smalltalk, any mention of their shared origins – she barely remembered her planet, there was nothing to say. She would ignore him, and he would be none the wiser.

 

But she could not ignore the pang in her chest, the tug at her heartstrings. All of a sudden she was not lightyears in space on a stardestroyer but on the ground, feeling the dirt beneath her bare feet. Yes, she had been barefoot once, she had once felt sunlight and air on her skin, before she had come here, come to the world illuminated by artificial lights and cooling systems, before every inch of her body had been covered in plated armor. She had a body underneath, a body that looked just like her mother, no matter how hard she tried to forget her heritage.

 

She had a mother once, a mother who was not the First Order. She didn't know where she was now, how she was doing, if she even missed her. She just remembered her tear streaked face as they bid farewell, her mother apologetic, saying it killed her to let her go, but she wanted her to live. Eat. Grow strong. Live, Phasma. Live.

 

She shifted her blaster in her hands, noting the strength she now had in the muscular body that carried the weight of her armor day after day. She was strong. She had to be strong. For her mother, who she would probably never see again.  She didn’t know how to describe and she didn’t know how to deal with the emotions that welled up inside her. But be strong, she could do that.

 

As she walked back to her quarters, the tune and foreign words of a language she had forgotten how to speak still danced on the tip of her tongue. A warmth spread throughout her body to her fingertips, as if she had just drank a bowl of their native herbal soup that she had drank so often as a child when there was not enough solid food to quell her family's appetites. It was a poor person's meal, but to her it was the most delicious dish in the galaxy.

 

Her stomach twisted again at the memory, and she shut the door behind her once she had entered her quarters. She growled as she took off her helmet and ran her fingers through her hair. Reconditioning was supposed to take care of this, and she felt herself falling apart at the seams.

 

She stripped out of her armor, curled up on her bed and closed her eyes.

She sighed as the ghosts of her past played like a Holovid behind her eyelids. It was something she would discourage her troops from doing but nonetheless, she let the familiar tune dance again indulgently in her head, lulling her to sleep like a stolen lullaby. She rested her face on the palm of her hand, pretending for a moment it was a mother's touch.

 

I am strong now, mother, she thought. I wish you could see me now. You would be proud, she thought, as she drifted off to sleep.


End file.
